Spotlighting Gen. Sullivan, war against Iroquois

Like most other little boys growing up in America, Frank Salvati of Port Jervis was fascinated by Indians. "Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud — mounted Indians with long, feathered war bonnets and bows and arrows. The Indians of the Plains."

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By Pat De Mono

recordonline.com

By Pat De Mono

Posted Oct. 11, 2013 at 2:00 AM

By Pat De Mono
Posted Oct. 11, 2013 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

Like most other little boys growing up in America, Frank Salvati of Port Jervis was fascinated by Indians. "Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud — mounted Indians with long, feathered war bonnets and bows and arrows. The Indians of the Plains."

But as he grew older, Salvati began to realize the role the "local" Indians — those in the Northeast — played in American history.

"If the Iroquois hadn't sided with the British during the French and Indian War," Salvati said, "we might be speaking French. And if the British had used their Indian alliance more wisely, they probably would have won the American Revolution."

For the past 15 years, Salvati has taken his passion for Indian history on the public lecture circuit — "to every historical group in the tri-state area, schools, even people's homes."

He was once asked to deliver a talk on Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant at a college graduation party, he says incredulously. "I asked them, 'No band? No DJ? You really want me?'" He has even lectured at a bar mitzvah.

On a recent Saturday, Salvati came to Fort Decker on West Main Street in Port Jervis to tell the tale of Gen. John Sullivan, hailed as "the man who defeated the Iroquois" in a monthlong campaign during the summer of 1779.

On the grounds of the historic fort, where the original stone structure was burned that same summer by the pro-British Brant and his raiders, a captivated audience heard how Sullivan was hardly the hero most history books portray.

George Washington had charged Sullivan with the task of "not only defeating the Iroquois, but destroying them," said Salvati. "He was to overrun their country, take them out of the war."

Sullivan's campaign actually "failed miserably," according to the historian. Although the Continental soldiers were victorious at Newtown, the only major battle of the campaign, "for the next two years, even after Washington had defeated Cornwallis at Yorktown and the British had surrendered, the Iroquois kept up the war and caused 10 times more damage and misery on the American frontiers than they did before the Sullivan Expedition."

Yet, according to Salvati, because Sullivan had exacted revenge by destroying scores of Iroquois towns and acres of farmlands and orchards, "he was feted with parades and banquets. Schools, children and racehorses were named after him."

And, said Salvati, Sullivan County is named for the famed Revolutionary War general. Most Port Jervis residents probably don't realize, said the history buff, that Sullivan Avenue is named for John Sullivan, and, with it, the former Sullivan Avenue Elementary School, the last of the neighborhood schools.

Those who attended Salvati's Fort Decker lecture came for different reasons. Eric Egeland, owner of a Newburgh-based business consulting firm, believes that learning about local history gives him a better understanding of his clients and their needs.

Barbara Schock, a local who "likes history," appreciated Salvati's insights from the perspective of the Indian. "They were just fighting for their land and for survival," she said.

Payton Perrucci, a fourth-grader at Anna S. Kuhl Elementary School, had a more ethereal reason for visiting the old stone house. "I heard it's haunted," she said.

For Frank Salvati, a man who lives without computer or cellphone, every lecture is another opportunity to return to a past he relishes. If he could somehow be transported through history, he said, "I'd go back to Colonial times and see how the Indians lived, in their original culture, before they were totally corrupted by the white man's way of life."